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2004-08-24 - 10:02 p.m.
you know what the Midwest is? young and restless
Last week, I took the week off work to fly out to Wisconsin to visit my brother Zac for a few days. Earlier in the summer I decided to schedule the trip for a couple weeks before the beginning of my fall semester, kind of as one last vacation before going back to school, since I haven’t visited Zac since he moved out there last year, and I probably won’t see him again until the fall, maybe the holidays. Since Dad’s all in favor of my trip, he offered to take care of my plane tickets and everything, which was really nice of him. Unfortunately, I didn’t realize until after he’d already booked my flight that he arranged for me to land in Chicago in the A.M., which put Zac in the position of having to drive 2-3 hours eary in the morning to pick me up and drop me off for my arrival and departure flights. I wish I had thought to be more specific when I asked Dad to book the flight, I didn’t expect him to do it that way, I would’ve gladly paid the difference and taken connecting flights for me to land somewhere closer to where Zac lives. Oh well, next time I’ll know better. So last Sunday I went over to Dad’s for dinner and stayed overnight so he could drive me to BWI early in the morning. Because their house got flooded after Hurricane Isabel last year, they were worried about Charley doing the same thing, so we made sure my car was parked a few blocks uphill so that it wouldn’t be in danger while I was gone. We got up at the crack of dawn and I dragged myself onto the plane at 6am. The flight was 2 hours, but because of the time zone change, I touched down at Midway at 9am. Dad had given me his cell phone to use on the trip, and when I landed, I called Zac and waited for a while at the pickup lane til he arrived. First thing we did was find a Denny’s to grub and catch up. We hung around the Chicago area into the afternoon, checking out weird stuff like a Japanese grocery store and a big-ass arcade where you pay $16 a head for 2 hours of unlimited gaming. I got addicted to this crazy old tank game called Tokyo Wars that was totally awesome and the seat rocked when you shot at the other tanks. We played this Star Wars Episode 1 pod racing game that has a hilarious message when you win: “your racing has brought hope to those who have none”. After the long drive back up, we finally arrived in Madison, Wisconsin, Zac’s home for the past year and change. Until recently, he had a roommate, but said roommate hadn’t been able to pay rent for a few months and Zac was getting tired of paying both shares of the rent as his friend got deeper and deeper in debt to him, so he finally kicked the guy out, although some of his stuff was still there when I arrived, and I ended up staying in the guy’s room for the week. It’s a shame that money problems messed up their friendship. But his place is pretty nice, a house split into 4 apartments, probably about the same size as my apt. if not a little bigger. And he’s got a hell of an entertainment center, huge TV screen, huge computer screen even, and tons of DVDs. In a way, the biggest difference between us that while we’re both geeks, I’m pretty much only a music geek and my interested in other stuff is pretty limited, but he’s an all-around geek (and I mean that in a good way): he’s got all the bases covered, movies and music and comics and toys and the web. So his apartment’s a pretty entertaining place to stay for a few days, always movies to watch and video games to play. You can bet I got my MarioKart on quite a bit. It’s kind of a shame that we didn’t do anything more exciting for the occasion of seeing each other, but it was still a good time. It was really kind of a throwback to the high school days when we’d spend summers playing video games all day and only leaving the house for fast food. And since those 5 days were the longest time off from work I’d had all summer, it was definitely a vacation for me. I felt kinda bad that Zac took off all week, though, since he’s been having money troubles lately what with the deadbeat roommate and all, but Dad gave us each a good amount of spending cash for the week, which made things a bit more fun. My trip was badly timed in one respect, though, that it also happened to be the week that Zac’s girlfriend and a lot of his local friends were out of town, so I didn’t get to meet any of them, which was kind of a bummer. But one day we went to his girlfriend’s apartment to feed her cat, Ivan (who is a she, oddly enough), so I at least got to meet the cat. Ivan’s a big fat old cat like ours were, and we fed her some stinky fish and brushed her fur and she was generally a sweetheart until she got sick of all the attention and we left her alone. He showed me a bit around Madison, which is a big college town, although school isn’t in session right now obviously, but it still had that vibe. Seems like a nice place to live. Lotsa record stores and comic book shops and places to eat. We hit up the grocery store and I made like I was in Wisconsin and bought cheese. On my last day, Thursday, we went to this place out in the sticks about an hour from his house, that he’d been to and told me about a while back. Forevertron (it doesn’t have an official site I don’t think but Google it) is this amazing collection of metal sculptures, including the record holder for the world’s largest sculpture. It’s all these amazing scrap metal creations that one guy has been making for the past 20 years, dozens upon dozens, large and small, resembling spaceships, insects, birds, musical instruments. Some of the most beautiful, bizarre art I’ve ever seen. Check it out if you ever get the chance. On the drive back that day, stopped at one of the Indian reservation-run casinos in the area, which Zac had been interested in checking out. After going in and talking a walk through the place, though, we decided not to try our luck, though. It was just wall to wall old people compulsively pumping nickels into slot machines. I’m glad that Native Americans have found a way to get financial reperations out of our society, but it’s kind of creepy to see first hand. Since we basically had to get up at 2am on Friday in order to get on the road in time for me to catch my flight, we’d planned to go to bed extra early Thursday, but of course that didn’t happen. We just kept putting it off, hanging out and playing MarioKart. So we ended up getting I think 3 hours of sleep. The pre-sunrise drive to Chicago was a bitch. But I helped out Zac with gas money for his troubles and in our sleep deprived state it was easy to entertain ourselves. On 3 hours of sleep almost anything is funny. We had time to maybe catch some breakfast together before my flight, but upon arriving at the airport, we realized that the places to eat were all pretty much beyond the gate where he couldn’t go without a boarding pass. So we said our goodbyes and I got on my way to catch my flight, and Zac drove home to catch some shut-eye before he had to go to work. I feel bad, that drive all the way and back must’ve been rough for him. But next time we’ll work it out better. But it was good to see him. And if he stays out there for the long term, I’ll definitely be visiting again, and hopefully will get to meet more of his peeps. -al
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